Unas Preguntas - One Or Two Questions

Documentary by Kristina Konrad, 237 min., Germany/Uruguay 2018

Uruguay in the Late Eighties

In 1986, the Uruguayan Parliament passed a law granting amnesty for all crimes and human rights violations committed by the military and police during the dictatorship (1973-85). This law of impunity prevented the clarification demanded by the relatives of those who had disappeared and been murdered by the former regime. A public initiative arose calling for a referendum in which the law be subject to the vote of the people.

Unas preguntas uses U-matic footage, mostly of interviews recorded on the streets of Uruguay between 1987 and 1989, to present a time capsule of the period. The result is a multifaceted reflection of the country and its inhabitants in which the values of democracy – such as peace, justice, and equality – are continually questioned and re-explored.

Press

One can hear a plurality of opinions, experience a society in upheaval and recognise the importance of the public sphere as a stage for political debate. An example of democracy in action, of the kind that once again needs defending in many places in the world today. Birgit Kohler, Forum

In UNAS PREGUNTAS , the horror is ultimately more subtle, less visible. It is concealed in the voices of the people interviewed on the street, in their stories of torture, rapes and disappearances from the time of the military dictatorship that has only just ended. These images of the agora recall the horror that lies beneath them, half invisible and half still shining through, yet to vanish entirely and always ready to return.

Perhaps the political struggle takes place more between images than between different discourses, such as between the colours that became the logos of the rival camps in the period leading up to the referendum in Uruguay: the “Greens”, who were in favour of repealing the amnesty for the military, and the “Yellows”, who were opposed. These camps delivered a propaganda battle on television in which two political positions were advertised like just another attractive product among car tires, refrigerators and coffee (UNAS PREGUNTAS shares certain similarities with Pablo Larraín’s NO! here, which is about the advertising campaign for free elections that took place at around the same time, at the end of the Pinochet era in Chile). Even the advertising employed by the Greens, who want to see the military convicted, does not in any way recall the atrocities of the dictatorship; happy people, dancers and combine harvesters appear instead. By continually inserting these television clips into her collection of interviews, Konrad makes the voices gathered in the four hours of film material recognisable as never-ending variations on these two logos – as if Konrad were conducting a survey of customers to find out which product they prefer. The (advertising) image corresponds less to a concrete political message than to a pure signal, aimpulse of a particular colour that lines up the people in different directions.

Philipp Stadelmaier, berlinale forummagazin Film Democracies

Collaborating with the filmmaker René Frölke, who edited One or Two Questions , Konrad has assembled a wealth of U-matic tape footage of Uruguayan citizens being interviewed on the street concerning the impending vote, though the TV interviewers deliberately avoid framing their questions in terms of the question of the hour: “Are you voting yellow [against prosecuting] or green [for prosecuting]?” Rather, they engage their subjects in a manner that simultaneously recalls Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer and deconstructs the rhetoric deployed by both sides of the debate, which is founded upon the notion that the vote amounts to a choice between “justice” and “peace”: the interviewers ask the Uruguayans what peace means them, is there peace in Uruguay today, whether there’s a distinction between peace and justice, and, of course, why exactly peace and justice must be mutually exclusive in this case? Television commercials—political ads and campy spots shilling for consumer goods alike—are interspersed throughout, introducing an element of overt humor but also crucial context for the interviews; their imagery and messaging played a signifi cant role in the formulation of public opinion regarding whether to litigate the country’s recent dictatorial past. Th e individual responses that the interviewerprotagonists receive illustrate a spectrum of collective thinking about this burning question, a multiplicity of distinctive ideological and pragmatic positions about the costs and benefi ts of pursuing historical justice. But as the fi lm goes on, these pieces of the puzzle cohere to yield an enthralling, even intimate image of an entire nation at a moral crossroads and of democracy—with all of its righteous freedoms and maddening illusions—functioning where it was once nonexistent.

One or Two Questions is an engrossing, powerful, and frequently funny look at democracy in action. Film society of Lincoln Center

Cinema as a platform for democracy in its infancy. Street as a stage of public forum. Television as a machine of propaganda. It's important that Konrad and editor René Frölke keep the footage in their original form so we get to see how a conversation develops in its entirety. A simple but essential question, "What is peace?" can initiate many different aspects of people's opinions at the time. Uforock

A mesmerizing trip into the political mindset of a whole country. The contradictions, the ignorance and the open wounds that still bleeds are exposed via gestures, painted walls and the voices of the people who have to choice between reconcilation or justice. Along with Beckerman's 'The Waldheim Waltz' this is another example of great political cinema that use archive in order to exorcisize the ghost that haunts the present. Lucas Granero

A great portrait of the frailty of democracy. The interviews become tiring, sure, but what worth would such a film have if it didn't allow a substantial number of people to have their due screentime? Diogo Vale

Four hours may sound like a tall order for a Monday night in NYC, but every second of Kristina Konrad’s extraordinary, urgent ONE OR TWO QUESTIONS—playing tonight at @FilmLinc’s Art of the Real—is well worth it.

What emerges is not a televisual mishmash of stock images and sound bites, but the rare archival film that actually trusts its material, a work of the most profound respect for those who become, in varying degrees of complicity, the subject of media images. It is an eminently diligent, honorable attempt to let the people speak—even if it is too late—and not a second of it is superfluous. Leo Goldsmith, Artforum